I Promised I'd Never Forget
by CloseToFlying
Summary: It haunts him to this day, but even in a stupor, he promised he'd never forget. Rated T because it is the Hunger Games, and they are for teenagers.


**A/N: I am in love with the Hunger Games. I especially love Gale, Rue and younger Haymitch. Before he gets all drunken and depressed. **

**Anyways, this is a one-shot, in which Maysilee and Haymitch team up, and starting just before she saves him.**

**Sorry if some of the facts are wrong in any of my stories... I haven't managed to buy my own set of the books yet, and my sister is kind of a bitch and won't let me read them.**

_Part One: Watch Me Do Me_

I was standing concealed in the trees, watching the fight happen. Haymitch was doing fine. He had knocked out three of the four Careers. Then, as I stood and watched, it got bad. I was going to step in the first time he was almost killed, but then at the last second he turned it around. Then it happened again.

So I decided it was time to tribute-up and aimed, letting the arrow fly. I thought I was going to miss, but it was right where I had aimed, and the after a few moments of couching blood, the Career died.

Haymitch was looking around, obviously wondering who had shot the arrow, so I stepped out of the trees.

"We'll live longer with two of us." I said, my voice sounded extraordinarily loud, and I mentally winced.

Haymitch wiped blood from a cut on his face. "Looks like you've proven that." He motioned vaguely towards the body.

I just stared at him. _Maybe together... maybe one of us can go back home. Even without a mentor._

"We should go before the animals realize that there's blood." Haymitch finally said.

"Yeah." I muttered, following him.

We'd soon settled into a pattern, taking turns watching in the night, trying to block out the guilt as face through face flitted through the sky, and then wake the other early in the morning to move again.

Turns out that there were still 4 Careers. I hadn't figured out which ones we killed; I never could look a dead mammal in the face.

(Line)

"Maysilee!" Haymitch shook me awake earlier one morning. I punched out through the air reflexively before registering his voice.

The dreams had been worse than usual. Haymitch and I stumbling through the forest with the Career pack after us. Then the knife whistling past me, just as Haymitch stopped to make sure I was still alive. The knife burying itself in his stomach as he stared at me, and my endless screaming.

"Sorry!" I winced, expecting him to yell like he did when he woke me from my nightmares.

"It's fine." His tone wasn't abrupt like usual, and I had to focus on not letting my brow raise in question.

"Are we leaving?" I asked, shaking the last of sleep from my head.

"No. You were worse than usual." He said, looking almost concerned.

I shrugged. "_They_ were worse than usual." I whispered.

"What happened?"

"You died while you were facing me."

He knew about my problem with seeing the faces of dead people. "It's not real. It will never be real."

I didn't respond, and curled up again. "Stay with me?"

"For as long as I can." He said, almost too quietly for me to hear.

In all my years of being forced to watch the Hunger Games, I didn't think I'd ever have made it to the final eight. I especially didn't think three out of four of the District 12 tributes would.

And I'd never imagined that a member of the Seam and the supposedly stuck up merchant's daughter would be allies.

Hours later when the sun started to rise, Haymitch woke me up again and we walked. And walked. And walked some more, until my legs felt like they were going to give out.

We'd walked for three days and two nights. I finally stopped against a tree. Partially to catch my breath. Partially to question his thoughts.

"We can't stop." He only briefly looked back at me.

For some reason this angered me even more. "Why won't you look at me?" I exploded.

He turned completely around. "Because then if it comes down to the two of us I won't be able to kill you!" he snapped.

I took a deep breath. "Haymitch. Looking at me isn't what's preventing you from killing me. Otherwise you would have done it a damn long time ago when I first started being a pain in the ass."

His eyes sparked with the curiosity and mischief I knew from him at school. "So you're being a pain in the ass on purpose?"

"My question first." I insisted.

He had moved closer, so I was almost pinned against the tree. His eyes finally met mine.

"If I look at you, I see _you_. The girl who shared my friends at school, but that I never took the time to get to know. And now I know you. Just in time for one or both of us to die. I don't want to think about that." His voice was quiet.

I stared at him. Trying to think of something to say, I finally came up with something that made him smile the first real smile I'd seen since school.

"I didn't exactly try to be your friend. In fact you scared me." I admitted.

It even brought out a tiny laugh, but then it was gone. "Are you going to walk now? Or do I have to carry you?"

I pretended to consider this. "I'd go with carry, but I think that's actually a non option." With that I started walking, leaving a presumably shocked Haymitch behind.

"Are you coming or what?" I asked, knowing that it would get under his skin a little bit.

**.&.**

After day upon day of walking and walking, I'd had enough for the second time. One more was dead. The other 12 girl.

This time I crouched, slightly behind a bush, and waited for him to notice. Things were considerably lighter between us; he wasn't as aloof and I wasn't as much of an ass.

We'd gotten lots of sponsors, even without a mentor, and seeing as all four District 11 tributes were dead, the girl named Veera who had mentored them had taken over sending us gifts.

Apparently everyone loves a good bantering relationship between two from the same District. I never understood it, but Haymitch seemed to.

When he realized I'd stopped moving, he sighed. "Going back to the pain in the ass thing?" he asked, shooting me _the_ look.

"What if I am?" I challenged. "You're not going to leave me here. Not yet."

Haymitch sighed. Then, acting as if he didn't have a choice, he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.

"Haymitch put me down!" I demanded, pounding his back with my fists.

"Well Maysi are you going to walk?"

I know he felt me give up. "Fine. I'll walk." I muttered. "And _stop_ calling me Maysi."

He set me down and brushed off my pants, as if he'd plopped me down in the dirt. Like he'd ever do that. He knows I'd kill him myself if I got dirtier than I already was and it wasn't on my own will.

He just stood there smirking at me until I started walking. As we walked, I pulled arrow after arrow out of my quiver, and inspected them before putting them back, then pulling them each out again, and stringing them in my bow, to see if they had gotten weak.

He watched out of the corner of his eye, whenever he thought I wasn't looking. I knew he was. After half a day of silence, he was the first to speak, which came of something as a shock.

"Why did you save me that day?"

I looked at him in confusion. "Why shouldn't I have?"

The reply was what caught him off guard more than any other answer I could have given.

"It would have been so much easier to just let me die."

"Then I'd be asking to die too. One among many reasons."

"I've got all day sweetheart." There was the cocky boy she'd started to miss already.

"Do you really?"

"If I don't then I want to know before I die." I considered this briefly. "Alright."

With that one word, I launched into a recap of that day.

"I wasn't going to save you. Sure we'd trained together, but we split up in the arena and we were just... different again. A town girl who thought she had no place here, among people so much better at this than she, and a Seam boy that everyone told her was no good, that scared her and that she wanted to know, but was resigned to the fact she'd never have the chance." I paused, looking at his face.

It was blank, but his eyes were thoughtful. I was waiting for him to answer, without really realizing it myself. At any rate, he seemed to realize before I did, that it was his turn to talk.

"Turns out you do have a place here. After all we're down to the final seven now."

I shrugged. "I'd almost have preferred an early death at this point. They're just going to be more painful now."

"Aw, but you wouldn't have met the real me Town Girl."

"I already know the real you Seam Boy. I do my homework." I fired back.

"Fair enough."

"Anyways, where was I?" I paused. "Oh yeah. I was actually leaving behind the two Careers that weren't killing you. Or attempting to. Probably because they were dead, but that's irrelevant."

Haymitch didn't seem to think so. "_You_ took out two Careers?"

I fixed him with a glare that made him flinch a step away from me. "Why so surprised?"

"You're tiny. You're about the size of a 13 year old and you're 16."

"Height and Width of the body doesn't make up for the lack of size of your brain." I commented drily.

"Touché." Haymitch replied. "Continue?"

"So, you know I have a problem with dead faces. So I kind of took off as soon as the two cannons went off, and then I ran into you fighting. The first time you almost died, I was about to step in, but then it kept going. Before the second time, I was waiting for the right moment to either leave or help, and I wasn't sure which one I was going to do. But then when he was about to kill you, I realized I'd strung my bow without noticing and it was already aimed at the back of his neck. So I shot it."

Haymitch nodded. "I'd thank you, but I'm not completely sure I mean it."

"I don't want you to thank me." I said.

He seemed surprised. "Why?"

"Because saving someone's lives in this is almost like killing them outside of the arena. It ends life as they know it for good." I said, almost not sure that was why myself, but decided to go with it. It was the best answer I had.

"By the way Haymitch; don't ever call me sweetheart if you don't mean it." I insisted, continuing on along the nonexistent path we were following.

He stared after me, I could feel it.

_Part Two: Curse At The Wind_

She, armed with her dart gun, darts dripped in poison, and he with his knives face off against two of the three remaining Careers. It's down to the five of them, and as she shoots a warning dart, aware she has more than she wants, the poison drips onto one's hand and he screams in pain, and they take off.

They continue on until she stops. Leaning against a tree in the exact same position that she was in the first time she stopped.

His reaction is predictably the same. "We can't stop."

"Why?" This is the first time she's questioned it in that tone.

"Maysilee, we can't." There's a warning note in his tone, but she chooses to ignore it, in the way that only she would dare.

"Why Haymitch? What are you looking for?" She's fighting to keep her voice somewhat quiet, but he can hear the annoyance and the challenge clear as he can hear the creepy buzz that always fills the arena.

"There has to be an end to it." He reasons.

"There's no end."

"The arena can't go on forever!" His temper is starting to get the better of him. "There has to be a side to it that we can get to."

She sees that he's getting more upset than she wishes him to be. "Fine." They continue walking.

She's on a higher alert than normal, and he wonders why, but doesn't ask. It's not important enough.

**.&.**

It's five days until they reach the cliff ending. There's no way down. She's had enough of walking this way, she's not even going to look over the edge.

"That's it, it's the end. Let's go back."

He's about to agree, because no matter how hard he protests, he's infatuated with her to the point of falling in love. And his sweetheart back home doesn't mean anything to him anymore. No more than a sister would anyways. Then something stops him, a nagging suspicion that there's something here he can use to his advantage.

"No."

She twirls the dart gun absent-mindedly and nods. "Fine. Now's a good a time as any to end our alliance. I'm not willing to let it come down to the two of us." She said. "I'll never consider killing you Haymitch."

She dips her head once and leaves him.

He's only just figured out that the force field rebounds things when he hears her screams. It's the ones that she makes when she's having nightmares, except a million times as loud.

He runs for her, knowing in the back of his mind that he doesn't have to, but knowing in the rest of his mind that he does in fact _have to_.

When he arrives, he sees five dead, shockingly pink birds and her dart gun. The remainder of the birds didn't scatter when the shots were fired like normal birds. Instead they clawed her to the point of no return. No amount of medicine would save her now.

Instead he grabs her hand and vows to stay with her until she's gone. She manages to lift a hand and motion him down, her pain evident even under the blood that is streaked across almost all of her face.

He leans down and pushes herself into that almost sitting position enough that she flinches the tiniest bit with pain and kisses him.

Falling back down, she lets her fingers run over her face and says one phrase, although there's so many more things he can tell she wants to say.

"Win..." he almost doesn't hear the last part, as her voice dies out for the last time, "for me because I love you Haymitch."

"I promise. And I'll never forget you."

Then her breath catches in her throat, blood bubbles out and then her eyes close.

And Haymitch wins the Games. For her because he loves her. And then his family is killed because of his supposed defiance. And he drinks himself into a stupor to try to forget;

_That Maysilee Donner is gone forever._

**A/N: Love? Hate? Think I suck at writing about Haymitch? Review and tell me **


End file.
